Everyone knows who Danny Trejo is. If you’ve seen more than two or three movies or television shows in your lifetime, there’s a good chance you’ve seen Danny Trejo. He is one of the most prolific actors on the planet (in fact, he’s scheduled to have TWENTY-TWO screen appearances in 2014 alone). The thing about Trejo, however, is that he almost always plays mean, take-no-sh*t Mexican villains or, in the case of the Machete films, a mean, take-no-sh*t Mexican hero. It may be typecasting, but honestly, no one plays that role better than Trejo.

(via Getty Image)

But the thing about Danny Trejo is this: He’s not that guy in real life. He’s the opposite of that guy. Follow him for a few days on Twitter, and you realize that he’s a really nice, sweet guy, who is always tweeting out little nuggets of inspiration, or — as the image above demonstrates — visiting ill kids in children’s hospitals. He is seriously a good motherf***king guy, so it’s fun to play his Hollywood personae against the real Trejo (as I attempted a few years ago with a Ryan Gosling inspired “Hey Girl” meme with Trejo). It’s a lot more fun, however, to juxtapose screenshots of Trejo from his film and television roles with his actualkind-hearted tweets, as demonstrated below.

He did a guest spot on the podcast ‘How Did This Get Made?’ and it was great. It’s worth checking out just to hear the anecdote about how a little kid recognized him, not from his movies, but as the guy who gave out teddy bears to the children at a battered women’s shelter.

I met him years ago when Wizard World used to visit Dallas and he was easily the nicest and most interesting guy at the convention. He was more than happy to answer any questions. He told a great story about how he got into Hollywood by just helping out with boxing and being a general mean looking motherfucker.

Danny trejo is truly an inspiration ..im proud to be living in the same neighborhood and on the block that trejo grew up in (and probably terrorized ..ha) ..when the town throws its annual parade he always comes back and participates ..shit there’s even a big bad ass mural of Trejo here… nothing but respect for Danny ..

I interviewed him like 12 years ago for a magazine I was writing for. This was waaaay before all this nice guy shit y’all are talking about came to be known, so I was pretty scared…for a phone interview. Then it turned out that he was a super nice guy and totally erased my fear in moments. By the time I ran out of questions, we were just shooting the shit and having a nice conversation. He even asked me all sorts of questions about my life. Danny Trejo is aces in my book. ACES I TELLS YA.